Kingpin's Story
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: There was more to Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin's story than what he told Smythe.


I always loved Spider-Man The Animated Series, and I got this idea that the Kingpin didn't tell Smythe the entire story about his past. What if he thought about his past afterwards, a past he rarely thought about?

Enjoy, and please leave feedback.

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Kingpin's Story.

"I knew you were ruthless," Smythe commented after Kingpin had finished with his abbreviated story of what his father was like, "but this…"

Kingpin smiled back when he heard what he took as a compliment, his eyes glinting evilly as he brought up what had happened to his father. "Sacrifices must be made," the crime lord replied, quoting his father's own words to him when he'd been trapped swinging from the bottom rung of that ladder as he and his father had tried to escape from the police after a burglary.

Kingpin's smile disappeared. "Leave me, Smythe," he ordered, suddenly serious. "I need to think."

Smythe nodded without a word and turned his hover-chair around and left, the motive unit of the motors whirring as the scientist left; Alastair Smythe had been a part of Wilson Fisk's organisation long enough to know what happened to those who annoyed the Kingpin, and he knew it was a good time to obey. But Fisk could see something in Smythe's eyes as he wheeled away, and he knew what it was. Longing. Alastair had never gotten over the 'death' of his own father, Spencer Smythe, but since Kingpin knew the man was imprisoned in suspended animation five floors down, it was for the greater good.

Besides, Smythe had needed motivation for building the spider-slayers to hunt Spider-Man down.

But as Fisk watched Smythe leave with the topic of fathers still in the air wrapped around them like the toxic fumes from Oscorp's factory wafting around Manhattan island, the crime lord could not think of Spider-Man enough to concentrate on him. No, his mind was on his father. Kingpin leaned back in his chair and let himself think about his father.

He had given Smythe an abridged version of the story, but the basics were sound enough, and back in those days where a Spider-Man was not known, never mind the likes of Doctor Octopus, Rhino, Shocker, or Scorpion, Wilson Fisk, successful businessman and philanthropist had gone by the name of Wilson Moriarty, a minor figure in New York's underworld.

Fisk frowned a little at the thought, but he had to accept it was true. He had known his father was a criminal a long time before he had actually gone with him to become a member of the mob. Fisk frowned a little in remembrance of those days of growing up in near poverty because of his father's incompetence, how he had seen his father committing a robbery at a bank and he had been fascinated by it. Deep down Wilson had always been fascinated with crime, and when he had seen his father with that gang Wilson had already begun to emulate his father by committing small thefts though it was tricky for him to perform any pickpocketing because of his chubby appearance and his size. Looking back on how everything had turned out in the past, Fisk could see that most of his motivations for joining his father were mostly because he wanted to be a part of that world, to become someone major.

But his father had never accepted him never mind wanted him along, but it hadn't stopped Wilson from trying in the past.

Like he had relayed to Smythe a few minutes ago, his father had what he considered to be great dreams, but he had given the scientist enough insight into his father's nature that his ambitions far outstripped his capabilities. His father had been nothing more than a gun-toting thug, a wannabe mobster who wanted to control and command a small chunk of the city where he would be seen as a boss. That was all he had wanted in life, really. He hadn't cared about his family, all he had wanted were his dreams to become a reality. And he had blamed everyone for his failures, including Wilson whenever things did not go his way, and they frequently did. By the time Fisk had been in his late teens, he had grown a thick skin but he still had a desire to please his father.

Fisk leaned back in his chair a little bit more, ignoring the creaks which came from it as it took the fullness of his considerable bulk as he recalled all of those break-ins, those robberies he and his father had committed, and he remembered how he and his father had been recruited into a much larger gang controlled by a powerful member of the mob. Oh, how his father had believed his dreams would become a reality, but of course, it didn't happen.

The mob boss had simply heard about his father's ambitions and had decided to keep him at arm's length for the duration of their association and he had given Wilson and his father some straightforward bank and jewellery store robberies to attend to. That was all they were good for, really - fetching and carrying, but the mob boss had impressed Wilson.

The man was always present at the scene of the robberies he himself had planned meticulously while Wilson and his father were given minor robberies to attend to, but occasionally they had been drafted to attend the major crimes. Wilson had watched as the mob boss had approached each crime in the manner in which a general would survey a battlefield, preparing his pieces like a grand chess-master while playing his cards right and gambling like a poker player for everything to go well while ensuring there were contingency plans built into his heists and operations.

But the most incredible thing about this mobster was the fact during the robberies each of the gang had a role to play. None of them knew who else was involved, where the job was going to be done until the last minute, so if there were any giving information to the police they wouldn't betray the robbery until it was too late. Each robber had their own task to carry out - two or more would work on the vault itself, another two would hold up the bank staff and keep everyone hostage, while others would keep watch and work on the security of the bank itself.

Wilson had been so awed by the approach he had watched it closely. The mobster became, in effect, a mentor - he hadn't known it, of course; by that point, Wilson Moriarty had become expert enough to know no criminal liked the thought of a rival. The mobster had also shown a particular dislike towards Wilson and his father, but Wilson was certain that whenever the mobster had looked straight at _him _he had seen something that Wilson's father had simply not possessed, and he even gave Wilson a bit more leeway but other than that Wilson didn't see the full planning of the robberies until they had fully unfolded.

Wilson learnt quite a lot from the mobster, but the three main things he had learnt were, three - plan the strategy well, two - choose the target well, and finally, firstly - when bringing the group together, keep them apart while you observe the robbery in progress.

The mobster had also brought Wilson to the attention of the Sherlock Holmes short stories, specifically The Final Problem, where the character of Professor James Moriarty was present. Kingpin not only liked to think of himself as a definite Moriarty because in the stories, the Moriarty was never caught - it was always his operatives who were sacrificed, like the pieces from a chessboard. Moriarty controlled the organisation, came up with the plans and executed them after conducting research and probably even staged rehearsals for the experts drafted in.

Name aside since Wilson Fisk's real last name was Moriarty, the Kingpin had definitely shaped his criminal empire into something closely resembling Moriarty's, though there were differences. But it would be a long time before he would be read to know what those differences were.

A few years before his arrest and his time in prison, Wilson had left his father for a couple of years and he had formed his own gang. He had been struck by the inspiration of stepping out of his father's shadow and the controlling influence of the mobster, and he had formed a small gang and he began planning a job on a bank.

He developed a plan.

It took Fisk over six months of work to get all the details he would need for the job, and it had taken slightly longer to find a decent hideout as well as the right sort of men to carry out the work he wanted to be done. Even harder was making sure none of them met one another because the more one person knew, the easier it would be for the police detectives to discover what it was he was planning and put an end to it by laying a trap which would catch them all out, but he had formed his plan carefully, taking his time with the layout and getting an idea of what would be needed for the robbery.

When he had finalised his plans, he gave instructions to the gang and he had prepared them well. In the end, he had surprised the gang when his plan which had been given out in small pieces over a period of a few months. Fisk sat back in the chair even further, absently thankful the chair had been designed to withstand a great deal of weight, remembering those days where he had controlled a gang who had been impatient waiting for their cut, and he remembered how more than once he had needed to rein them in before they made some stupid mistake he could not undo.

But in the end, his plan had gone down.

And it had been a surprise for the gang.

Wilson Moriarty had sent some of the gang into the dark, disused tunnel of an old part of New York's subway system that ran adjacent next to the vault of one of the banks. Wilson remembered how a few of the gang had questioned him on the matter, wondering why only a few of them were going into the ready-made tunnel carrying extremely dangerous explosives to the place Moriarty had marked on the tunnel wall beforehand late at night, and they wondered why only a few of them were going; even now Fisk was amused by their rather insane ideas which were mostly guesses that the gang was only a few people when all the time Fisk had been hinting that it was actually much larger, but it had served his purposes, especially at the end of the heist.

When the gang sent to the bank came back to the hideout as arranged where they would meet one another for the first time, the gang was surprised when they arrived with two different piles of swag. Money and diamonds.

Fisk smiled as he remembered revealing to the gang that day of the heists he had actually planned four different robberies. He had used an old abandoned subway tunnel for one of the banks, but for the diamond heist, a sewer had to be used, though in the same manner. The bank and the diamond merchants alarms had been put out of action by two men whom he had selected while the others would use explosives blasted by the explosive experts Fisk had found, and then they would conduct the heists, and with the alarms out of action, the police would not know where to start.

It was worse when they would find a tunnel and a sewer had been used, they wouldn't know which way to go, and even if they did the crooks would be miles away.

Once Fisk had finished telling them about his plan for a two-way robbery where the gang would split up and rob the bank and the diamond merchants, Fisk simply killed the gang and took everything with him. Knowing the police would soon be on his tail, Fisk conducted the next phase of his plan.

He set up a fake burial paid for with some of the cash from the robbery, and he arranged to have it buried in a nice ordinary graveyard, using a newly established funeral directors who had been eager for the work, and he found a decent gravesite which was far away from any cemetery where there were leaks, but he took further steps to ensure the protection of his swag.

Fisk had no intention of losing this little nest egg. He arranged for a watertight and waterproof coffin, telling the funeral directors he didn't want the remains damaged by water. He pretended he was burying a non-existent sister who simply did not exist, who had died of natural causes. When the funeral went ahead as he planned, Fisk left satisfied that the last part of his plan had worked the way he'd wanted it to work out. Over the next few months he would periodically return to the gravesite; to complete the illusion Wilson would take bunches of flowers to the grave, and clear away the direct at the grave.

To this day, Wilson was uncertain what had made him return to his father; he suspected he was still trying to earn his father's non-existent approval and acceptance even though he had gone behind his father's back and he did something greater than his father was ever able to accomplish on his own.

His father had wondered why he had not simply stayed away.

Sometimes Wilson wondered how things would have turned out for him if he had stayed away. One thing was for sure, he would be a very different man if that had happened.

It made no difference because when he returned to his father's side and helped him once more with his business pursuits. They had robbed another jewellery store, one of many his father had tried to use to get higher on the hierarchy. When Wilson had broken into the store, acting much like the enforcer of a mobster, he had thought his previous master plan to earn large amounts of money while acting like a chess player had been nothing more than a glorious dream as unrealistic as the ones his father was prone to have from time to time.

Wilson ground his teeth together as he remembered his father lashing out at him before his arrest. _"You are weak, Willie. USELESS!"_

Wilson remembered how he had been arrested, how the sound of the alarm had startled him and his father, and they both ran out, Wilson accidentally tripped and dropped their loot on the ground while his father climbed up that ladder without once looking back to see if his only son was behind him.

Moriarty senior had never cared before, why should he start then and now?

Wilson had tried to follow, and he had managed to catch the last rung of that blasted ladder, only to be stopped by the police with his father's talk of sacrifices needing to be made.

He had been swiftly arrested and sentenced to prison, but Wilson had seen his father in the audience of the trial. Wilson could have given him up, but he had chosen not too; some might claim it was out of some leftover loyalty, but his loyalty to his father had died the minute he had abandoned him to rot.

No, he had not given up on his father because he knew if he gave up his father, his reputation in the underworld would reflect that, and while his father was virtual nobody, he was still a criminal. But over the years he developed a strong sense of contempt and hatred for his father for being such a waste of space.

In the end, Wilson had gone to prison, and as he sat in his chair behind the desk moments after Smythe, one of many people whom he had manipulated and lied to over the years had left, Kingpin thought about those years he had spent inside.

He had done his best to keep his head down, but he had learnt how to fight back and he became pretty powerful inside though he never let on about the nest egg he'd set aside for himself - that was only for him, and if he told anyone where it was, by the time he got out, it could be long gone.

No, he kept firmly silent on the matter.

During those years where he learnt how to defend himself in prison, Wilson also had his eyes well and truly opened with how many different criminal fields there actually were - smuggling, drug dealing, and so many others. For years his father had wasted time on a small section when he could have unlocked a potential he'd never had. During his time, Wilson had kept his head down and learnt and he had also gone to those classes prisons hosted in order to rehabilitate the inmates.

By the time he got out of prison, Wilson Moriarty had acquired everything he would need to begin building his criminal empire.

But unlike what he had told Smythe, the story of the Kingpin didn't necessarily just start then. You can't go from prison to being a massively successful criminal mastermind the next day, and he had known that. His time in prison had given Wilson, not just the knowledge of what he needed, but he also had a few contacts to get in touch with.

Wilson Moriarty spent a year in the eye of the law in case they were watching him before he went to the gravesite and he dug up the grave of his 'sister,' and he fenced the diamonds slowly over the next few years while he left New York and travelled the world and America.

He travelled to Europe and spent the next six years of his life picking up business skills as well as making contact with various criminal organisations and making contacts in all of them, preparing for the day when he would form his empire.

He had plenty of time, but when he had been in prison and began making his plans to build his empire, he realised Wilson Moriarty would need to die and be replaced with someone else, someone different. He would also need to establish legitimate businesses along the way to present the appearance of a law-abiding member of society. After all, the best place to hide was in plain sight, and it was virtually impossible for a man of Wilson Moriarty (Fisk) who was enormous in stature, to just fade away. He had considered doing that, but he had quickly discounted it when he had been inside prison.

If he disappeared, he would never be able to move freely around, and he would feel like a ghost with no identity of his own. While his persona of Wilson Fisk was guaranteed to be a problem occasionally, he didn't want to live like a ghost.

When he returned from his travels, wiser and armed with contacts and knowledge, the last vestiges of Wilson Moriarty had faded. Wilson Fisk was taking shape. The first thing he had done was open two legitimate businesses, a cleaning firm and a launderette. After the profits generated by both grew larger and larger, he opened up a chain of launderettes and two more cleaning firms before he sold them all and used the money to begin a chain of hotels and restaurants in New York on the Eastern Seaboard and opening others as far as Mexico city, and San Francisco before he went into real estate.

With those legitimate businesses, Wilson Moriarty faded away and Wilson Fisk took over.

With the legitimate businesses opened and running, Wilson Fisk had no problem setting up smuggling rings to accept the drug factories he had set up in other parts of the country. It had brought him into conflict with others like Silvermane, who was a major player in the drug industry, but drugs were only a small part of Kingpin's businesses.

While he was manipulating events from behind the scenes by arranging for the deaths of many of the mob and taking over the smuggling rings that were already there, Kingpin organised, directed, and implemented a massive crime wave to ripple through the underworld, eliminating several mob bosses along the way, inciting gang wars which saw the end of old regimes before he took control and took hold of their own little corners of the underworld, absorbing them into his own empire.

By the time he got to looking for his father, Wilson had been very busy. But when he did devote his time to finding his father, Wilson had not been surprised when he'd discovered that his father had grown old and tired of not getting anywhere with his dreams. He had been reduced to an old recluse but the Kingpin's men found him, and when Fisk had learnt his father was alive and was being brought before him, he spent over half an hour erasing his previous criminal identity. He had been helped by the police officers he had on the take, especially those in internal affairs to let him know of any cop who could be brought for the right price.

And then… his father had been brought before him.

One look at the frail, defeated and old man had shown Fisk just what his father become. And he had been disgusted by it all. A far cry from the minor thug he had been in the underworld a long time ago, but it seemed he had worked out those dreams of his had been nothing but smoke and mirrors.

But his father had condemned himself with his own words when Wilson had stood up, his massive imposing body towering over his father's own frail physique.

"_It is you! Nobody believed me, but I knew the famous Kingpin was really my boy, Willie!" _

When he had heard that, Wilson had gone mad. He knew his father still had those stupid, unattainable dreams at that moment, and he wanted nothing more than to share the glory his son had created. In the end, Moriarty senior had been nothing more than a useless petty thug.

Too bad it was never going to happen. Wilson remembered how he had lashed out and told the old fool 'Willie' was long since dead after being condemned to prison, and it was now his turn.

His father was dead, by the hands of his own son while the two men who'd brought him before the Kingpin held him when Fisk had crushed his head to a pulp.

As he sat in his chair, Fisk finally put those his past memories out of his mind, but he couldn't help but remember what his father had said while he'd been aware of his own son's inability to climb that ladder all those years ago.

"_Sacrifices must be made - Sorry, son, that's the way things are!"_


End file.
